Texas school system is broken, not broke

CORPUS CHRISTI - Educators, school board members and superintendents were popping champagne corks this month when Judge John Dietz ruled that their wallets should be fattened by an average of $2,000 per student. That would cost us $11 billion a year.

The judge ruled that the school finance system creates an unconstitutional property tax that is inadequate to fund the high standards placed on it by the state.

TAB was an intervenor in the lawsuit, and asked Judge Dietz to rule that the system was inefficient and not producing an educated workforce, which I believe should be the core mission of our school system.

Judge Dietz agreed, saying that schools are inefficient with their dollars, and they are not graduating enough career- and college-ready students. Unfortunately, Judge Dietz did not include that issue in his final court ruling, saying those were legislative issues.

I guess it is possible that Judge Dietz believes that simply spending $2,000 more per student will get us the results that we want. It will not. We have been spending more money on education for a decade, even including last session’s cuts, and we still are left with a broken system that isn’t giving us the kind of results we all should be demanding.

Without efficiency changes like classroom size flexibility and at-will employment of teachers, more money won’t change very much. Dr. Eric Hanushek testified that if we were able to remove the least productive 8 percent of teachers and replace them with teachers just producing at an average level, our education system would be as good as Finland’s, which is the best in the world.

What different would spending $2,000 more per student really make? We already are spending $10,000 per student and only getting 23 percent of graduates career or college ready based on ACT scores. That’s simply not acceptable, and it won’t be changed by $2,000. I don’t remember a lot of testimony during the trial that would support the argument that $2,000 would bring the level of career or college ready graduates up to 65 percent, which is what we need to be economically competitive in the short term.

People may argue that it’s a small price to pay and that the “state” has the money to spend. The “state” only has money because it gets it from you. That is your money. When you are buying something you want to make sure to get your money’s worth. Is 23 percent of graduates career or college ready getting your money’s worth? No, it isn’t.

Much of the case presented to Judge Dietz was based on the argument that school districts are being asked to do more because of higher standards placed on them by what I believe is the strongest accountability system in the country. At the same time that they are arguing in court for more money, they are arguing before the Legislature to dismantle that accountability system. So, the basic fight for the school districts is this: We want more taxpayer money without being held accountable to those taxpayers for preparing their children for life after school. Parents, that gimmick should make you very upset.

While there are some issues of school finance that need to be addressed, simply adding $11 billion a year to the education budget won’t produce the results that we need. Maybe the real lawsuit should have been taxpayers suing to get a refund for money paid to schools because they have not done their primary job, graduating career- and college-ready students.